Not targeting anyone, but calling the combat bad without giving a reason doesn't help anyone's argument...
My two cents is that the game's combat is pretty okay. It CAN be played elegantly, stylishly, and very fun. BUT, it can also be played boringly (slash, Quen, roll etc.), and the problem is that the game does not punish boring gameplay bordering exploit. It doesn't reward fancy gameplay either beyond that it looks cool.
So here goes my biggest gripe with TW3 combat: the mechanic doesn't go hand in hand with the style. In the end of the day, combining alchemy, multiple signs, light/fast attacks and precise dodging only kills enemies marginally better than spamming attack and roll. So for most people who are very used to the mindset of just "beating the game," they are not encouraged to explore the elegant ways to play the game. However for someone like me who wants to see Geralt fight like a witcher, I choose to use the full arsenal of animations and signs the game has to offer, not so much that it makes the fights significantly easier, but that I get a kick out of roleplaying as a real witcher. And that's actually really fun, but you sorta have to decide to do that. The game mechanics itself doesn't help you there.
Let me see if I can upload a video of my own gameplay sometime...
What do you call elegant way? Use axii, then quen, then put yrden and then start slashing until quen broken then again axii, quen, yrden? Is this elegant? With this simplistic and obvious order you can kill anybody who is not resistant to axii no matter how powerful they are (if you can pierce their armor of course, and if you can't they are invincible no matter what you do). And in late game replace Yrden with Rend and slash helpless "boss monster" with critical hits? And if he is resistant to axii but then he is usually susceptible to fire and then you don't need any combo just spam igni? Basic quen shows that AI is so stupid that can't coordinate even two simultaneous hits in row, and alternative quen is simply a cheat.
Signs are completely overpowered and the only reason for what you need sword is fact that signs (with exception of burning effect) can't do big damage in late game.
Your every sign is hard counter to any enemy (unless he is resistant to it), I remember that only really challenging and interesting battles were against monsters with high resistance to signs, otherwise it's just easy beating. And you don't need to spent a lot of character points for this, a dozen of points and 150% sign intensity make your game a cakewalk until lvl 20+. And if you are 20+ there are so many effective ways to kill with different obvious builds so I can count only a few times when I was unable to defeat "sure-death-monster" from first try. And I am casual average player, I played most RPGs on normal difficulty and never feel a need to rise it in first walkthrough.
Also there are so many things that can prevent you from death - dodge, parry, block, quen, undying. So any poor monster, even if he is lvl 35 and you are 20 can't kill you because even if you fail your dodge, you are protected by quen and even if you made second mistake in a row you are protected by undying, so you need three mistakes in a row to die and only if monster can one-shot you. Of course there are some tricky boss monsters, but that's just a few percents of all battles.
So you are completely right - it's not that battle is bad in animation or responsiveness (not ideal, but good for RPG genre), it is simply unbalanced, if your "elegant ways" are working they are OP, and if they are not working then only way to win is sword+quen. After 100 hours you are getting bored of all that sign combinations and you just want to know where story ends so you are just slashing you way killing monsters in a most fast way (and sword+quen is the fastest). And this unbalance came first of all from AI stupidness. Why they can't simply attack all together? I played a dozen of "best of the year" RPGs and if there weren't clever AI available, then they will simply attack as a horde and slaughter you in few seconds without dancing around, roaring, waving fists and other useless actions which they are doing in TW3.
So that's your list of reasons (why combat is not great if you already know it mechanics):
1. Stupid AI
2. Unbalanced numbers
3. Unrewarding after lvl 11 (witcher's gear is always the best, it's extremely rare that you can find relic sword more effective then witcher's)
Of course many of you can say that you are happy with battle, balance and diversity, everything is cool, you are having fun for 500+ hours already.. I believe that you may have such opinion and it is sincere. But then you mustn't try another "best of the year" games because they can make you mad with elation and astonishment.
(sarcasm) You know that there were hundreds of spells in Baldur's Gate 2 and you simply can't make a step in dungeon without using at least two dozens of them? And it is balanced and designed in that way that you are not bored by endless changing spell lists, every battle you need to use micro-control because there are traps, weapon reach, weapon speed, timings, instant death and we were stupid young boys when it was released and still we were able to handle all that without getting bored.
And now you are telling about "elegant" ways in game with 8 spells, 2 basic attacks, 2 specials, useless crossbow
s and very situational grenades. There are not elegant ways in this game, only illusion of it.
Oh. I'm sorry it's not honest to compare TW3 battle to such clumsy, old and unrefined RPG-games like BG2 / Skyrim / ME2, they are all in top 10 on Metacritic, and TW3 "best game EVER!!" is not... TW3 is under Diablo in that rating.. Diablo.. plain slasher, with random-generated dungeons levels and loot... So Blizzard's random generator from twenty years ago is working better then CDPR's handmade game balance..
i don't know about what decent battle in TW3 you are talking about, it is worse even in comparison to the RPG-genre popular competitors, without comparisons to modern action games..